Another Voice On The Pipeline

I missed this when it happened, but it's already getting around the debate over our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline. See? An editor at a magazine called Science who used to work in the White House has changed her mind over the project. We win. Get out of our way, Nebraska farmers, it's death-funnel time!

In an editorial published there Thursday, McNutt describes how she has come to back the project that she previously opposed, and does not believe it would worsen greenhouse-gas emissions."This position may seem incongruous with my personal crusade to minimize fossil fuel use, a desire rooted in scientific understanding that climate change is a real threat and that tar sands oil produces higher GHG emissions than many alternatives," writes McNutt. But McNutt goes on to say she's now convinced that building Keystone would not speed up oil sands development, and notes that developer TransCanada changed the initial proposed route to avoid an ecologically sensitive region of Nebraska. "No method for moving hydrocarbons can be considered completely fail-safe. At least the current permitting process can, and should, be used to ensure that Keystone XL sets new standards for environmental safety. There is no similar leverage on the truck and rail transportation options, which produce higher GHG emissions and have a greater risk of spills, at a higher cost for transport," she writes.

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It should be noted that absolutely nothing has changed in the months it took for McNutt to change her mind. Tar sands are just as big an environmental catastrophe as they ever were. TransCanada changed the route a year ago, and the new route still imperils the Oglalla Aquifer to an unacceptable level. The company is still not to be trusted as far as you can throw northern Alberta. (History tells us that, no matter what state-of-the-art monitoring devices TransCanada installs on the pipeline, once the cancer juice is flowing, it will not keep up the maintenance until something spills or blows up, at which point it will buy its way out of its responsibilities.) It has not dealt in good faith with the people who live along the proposed route for 15 minutes straight any time in the past five years. Yet McNutt seems to believe that TransCanada, which is currently being pilloried in the courts for arranging to steal people's land from them, can be tamed by the right combination of regulations and magical thinking.

McNutt believes there should be some strings attached to approval of Keystone, TransCanada's project that would bring oil from Alberta's oil-sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries.She suggested that Obama could link approval to "concessions" and policies that help spur green-energy development and stem carbon emissions. "As part of a compromise to allow the project to move forward, let's now insist on an income stream from Keystone XL revenues to support investment in renewable energy sources to secure our energy future," she writes.

And let it buy us all magic sparkle unicorns. And the respirators they're eventually going to need.